http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashleigh_Banfield

In April 2003, in a speech at Kansas State University, Banfield raised concerns regarding media coverage of the conflict in Iraq. She also blasted "cable news operators who wrap themselves in the American flag and go after a certain target demographic", specifically naming Fox News Channel as an example.[2] According to a New York Times article, her speech angered NBC management who rebuked her and lowered her profile. She was fired in 2004

That is what happens to journalists who speak out..

You are wrong..

My father was a total neat freak and my mother was no slob.

Both my brother and I are slobs.

It has a lot to do with personality types. I'm a very strong INTP on the MBTI and INTPs just don't see stuff that sits for more than about 48 hours. We are very inwardly drawn and our urroundings don't matter much to us at all.

http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html

The general style of the home is largely irrelevant. When an object is put aside, not to be returned to for a while, it will lie fully ignored until used again. Objects which lie unmoved for more than about 48 hours usually become invisible to the INTP, until such time as he has a use for them again. For other temperaments whose need for tidiness and order in a house is strong, this lack of concern in this area may seem despairing. For the INTP, however, no problem exists. Corners of rooms, table tops and cupboards may become cluttered with objects, but while they don't move they remain effectively invisible and are unimportant.

America deserves this.. It is only right and fitting that the freedoms of the majority be stripped away since the majority has gleefully cheered on the stripping of the freedoms from the minority.

We have allowed "The Land of the Free" to become the largest incarcerator of human beings on the planet and only a paltry few have raised our voices to protest.

Even worse, liberals here actually get angry when I raise the subject of the drug war and the stripping of basic freedoms that it has entailed.

It amuses me greatly, though darkly, to see y'all flapping and squawking now that your own freedoms are threatened.

As it is with the drug war, so is it with domestic spying.. If you haven't done anything wrong you have nothing to fear.

Right?

Not so fast there. As Glenn and others have pointed out many times, the majority of Americans are against the harm that has been wrought against the Constitution.

If that is so then why does "The Land of the Free" have the highest incarceration rate in the world?

If that is so then why were there not literally millions of liberals camped out in front of the SCOTUS after Bush v. Gore?

If that is so then why did GW Bush get a higher percentage of the vote in 2004 than in 2000?

I could go on almost indefinitely but I think you get my drift.

It all depends..

Were you there?

Or watching it on teh nooz?

If the latter, then almost certainly no..

Before you casually call for whistleblowing and acts of civil disobedience, know that the average citizen is going to protect self-interests, family and property first. There is a severe dangerousness of dissent.

Freedom is not free, eh?

It is curious, curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. -Mark Twain

Actually I'm not even talking protest as much as I am voting for politicians who will continue oppressive policies based purely on fantasy. A state religion if you will.

When people fall for false propaganda the entire fault does not lie with those disseminating the propaganda, some fault lies with those who unthinkingly swallow lies.

I'm one of those with a record for protesting, from back in the early seventies.

Sometimes, they don't tell the truth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microexpression

And the presidential candidates certainly know what their base wants.

And how do the Democrats treat their base?

Help Dodd pay off his campaign debt so he can concentrate on the business at hand rather than raising money.

I'm a pack rat as well as a seriously not-neat person.

I can't tell you how many times I have dug through my stuff at three am to find something that I couldn't have bought at the store even if they were open.

I detest throwing things away, only to have to buy them again a few weeks or months later. It's bad for the environment and bad for my bank account.

One small example: I sold part of a car stereo on ebay a few weeks ago and as I was taking the stereo apart my wife says "you're going to throw the rest of it away, right?". Well, I did go ahead and throw it away, now only a few weeks later I have to go out and buy it again since the stereo in my wife's car stopped working and I need that part..

$30 down the drain, that much more added to the landfill and that much more of our precious resources wasted to remake something I normally would have tossed in my "cultch" box.

Not to mention the energy required to ship the item to me since it is not obtainable in local stores.

Apparently I'm in the minority on Salon, I can't *afford* to keep buying the same stuff over and over again.

Throw in fear of rampaging terrorists on telephones, and the GOP could squeak another win.

Throw in a Democratic party which treats its base as lepers to be shunned at all cost and I'm not sure it will be a "squeaker".

We passed the cusp on the slide to oligarchy decades ago. My personal marker was when Bush 41 preemptively pardoned Cap the Knife Weinberger in order to cover up his own involvement in Iran Contra..